Everything in life comes with at least two sides to it, including being smart. Human beings are amazing time travelers, given our ability to imagine the future and ruminate about our past. What I have noticed is that when we encourage and reward people too much for their ability to think, we condition them to [...]

Happy Thanksgiving to you! Sorry for the silence over the last month. When I quit my job earlier this year, I made a promise to visit my mom more often. Suddenly, I realized the year was almost coming to an end and I was yet to make the trip. So, I made the choice to [...]

As we begin to be more mindful in our lives and shift away from living mindlessly in an auto-pilot manner, we need to acknowledge the chasm that exists between these two states of being. We usually tend to categorize things into just two buckets - whether they be good/bad, right/wrong, rich/poor, kind/rude, and so on. [...]

Some of you may be familiar with the Four Learning Stages of Competence—Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and Unconscious Competence. Developed at Gordon Training International, it provides a great model for learning. In order to cultivate new habits or learn new skills, we usually follow this sequence. Given that our lives are a product [...]

We have all heard the old adage that our lives are the product of our choices. Why is it that no one really bothers to take the time to teach us this vital skill — Making Choices? Not in school, nor at home. In some cases, one may encounter a course in decision-theory. Even if [...]

When I started MediaSite, my second video software company in the late nineties, I had to learn the painful lesson that good sales and marketing were as or more important to building a good company than the product or service itself. Until then, I had prided myself with the belief that great products made great companies. [...]

Most of us seem to live our lives as human doings. While this is not an original term that I coined, I can't seem to recall where I first heard it. We tend to get caught up in the rat race — trying to make it happen, doing a good job, sending kids to college, [...]

Our Internet access has been poor and intermittent, so I could not post this when I actually wrote it. We are sitting in India at a friend's place with me struggling to catch up on emails and my son trying to catch up with his school homework. Suddenly, my 14-year-old son looks at me and says, [...]

Dear Friends, I had written a post titled 'Scaling Peaks (New Heights) and the Valley of Learning' back in June and had my daughter create an illustration for it. Since I liked it a lot, I made it the wall paper on my iPad. Recently, I discovered an App on the iPad called 'The Now' [...]

How do you to make the choices you make? While we may think it's logic and reason, many times it's something else — strong, hidden and invisible forces created to feed and protect us for centuries. Have you been to a Black Friday sale? Just as the approach of autumn sends the birds migrating south, [...]

Over the last year, I have been meeting a number of very "successful" people who are beginning to look more closely at the choices they have made thus far in life and those they are yet to make. I believe this stems from a gnawing feeling of unease that arises in the background as they reflect on their [...]

One of the most powerful movies that moved me to tears while inspiring me into action was Pay It Forward. It stars Haley Joel Osment as a boy who launches a good-will movement, Helen Hunt as his single mother, and Kevin Spacey as his social-studies teacher. Over the last two weeks, I have had to capture [...]

Taking charge and personal responsibility have been old American values, but in today's culture they feel burdensome and hard work to many. As I speak at various venues and workshops, I notice that I hold back and not say the phrase, "You need to take personal responsibility for your future and your life." No one [...]

Can you imagine punching your face with your own fist at 200 mph? It can happen and hurt you very badly, especially if you drive like many of us do and the airbag goes off. When do you stop listening to respected and published instructions and adapt to changing times? Does the education system such [...]

We live busy lives with too much going on most of the time. The very fact that I am up at 1:30 AM trying to write and share this post is a testament to how busy we are. Rushing around in this state seems like we are running in an auto-pilot mode, like a zombie [...]

Our mind is very powerful. It can help us and also destroy us. If we can accept that, we can move forward in life while paying close attention to the thoughts we think. Being mindful and aware of the goings on and the voices in your head can be very helpful. I try to start [...]

To Hal The happiest man I know I really wanted to honor this man whom I respected a great deal and always remembered when I was having a bad day. Hal made sure that he punctuated my belief in him when I visited his home to dedicate my book. He had fallen a couple of [...]

Recently, my flight from Boston to Pittsburgh was delayed by several hours. As I waited for the plane to arrive, I bumped into an old college friend at the airport. We had not seen each other for a long time and we began to share what we had been up to since we last met. [...]

I had the most interesting business meeting today. In my 25 years of working, many of them in an executive capacity, I have yet to be in a meeting which was more like hazing than a conversation. The person was fully aware of what he was doing, but could care less and said so with [...]

On Tuesday, life presented me with some very difficult circumstances and an incredible opportunity to grow. My family left for India on July 4th and arrived there on July 6th. A mere four hours after they landed, my 9-year-old daughter started vomiting and this continued for almost 8 hours. She got severely dehydrated and extremely [...]

About Mindful Choices

A blog to explore the tricks your mind can play. We believe, "If you help them see it, they will build it." The content of this blog contains as many AHA type articles as possible. It is a space where learning can take place, with real life examples, realizations, aha moments, and awareness of the mind tricks.